alcohol gel

A high profile article was published earlier this year in Science Translational Medicine, suggesting that Enterococcus faecium can exhibit clinically relevant levels of tolerance to alcohol-based hand hygiene products. The article has generated a huge amount of press coverage and discussion amongst experts. So, I thought it was about time I gave the article a once over. My initial thought was this would be unhelpful extrapolation of low-level tolerance to alcohol gel that wouldn’t be meaningful in a clinical setting. But having read the paper, there’s genuine concern here. Overall though, if true resistance to alcohol gel was going to be a problem, I’m pretty sure it would have reared its ugly head already.